First of all, let me say that November is a horrible month in which to do National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo. It’s busy, there’s travel going on, there’s family obligations, food comas, etc. I nominate changing it to…January. The holidays are over, it’s a fresh start to a new year, and it’s not my birthday month. But I digress.

I did the best I could this month. I felt particularly stretched thin, blogwise and otherwise. I’ve found that whenever I try to raise the quantity of blog posts I do, the quality of each post goes down considerably, and this month reflected that. So, I stretched the rules and reblogged several oldies that I am proud of, and I think those rounded out the month’s work quite well.

I wanted this NaBloPoMo to reignite my love of writing and my ability to express myself more eloquently. It got me thinking about future blog topics that I can write when I have more time (meaning, posts that I can compose over the course of a week in 15 minute increments while hiding in the bathroom). It helped awaken my creative side as I continue to figure out who my post(during?)-mommyhood self is going to be.

I’d like to thank everyone who read this month. I know posting once a day can get old pretty quick, so thanks to anyone who stopped by. A special thank you to anyone who left comments, because it’s nice to know that my words aren’t just going out into the void.

I’d love some feedback. What posts from this month did you like? What topics would you like to see more of? Any new topics you’d like me to tackle?

In closing, my daughter just starting pulling herself to a standing position yesterday and I’m thrilled because she’s amazing. She plans to apply early admission to Cal next week.

I thought of this post because each and every time another famous man is fired for sexual misconduct, I am reminded just how disgustingly prevalent rape culture really is.
Reading this post back again, I’d change two things: such a gentleman would never even own roofies. And, in a world where men and women are truly equal, she wouldn’t need pepper spray. And he wouldn’t call her the b-word, either. So three things.
At any rate, Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year free of rape culture and rampant sexual harassment.

I hope everyone’s holiday season is shaping up to be better than mine, which shouldn’t be too hard since I spent mine battling food poisoning and watching the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy. They really should have just taken those damn eagles all the way to Mount Doom, btw.

Speaking of Mount Doom, I like me some Christmas tunage around this time of year, and I’ve always liked Baby It’s Cold Outside, but I never really paid attention to the lyrics before now. Previously, I assumed it was all cutesy how a man and a woman were singing about how cold it was outside and how happy they were to be all warm and snuggly by a fire. But now – whoa man, this song is downright creepy and bordering on abusive!

Now that I’ve been forever robbed of the pleasure that comes from listening to this song, I…

We’re going home to California for the week of Thanksgiving and I’m all excited to BE there, but I am not at all excited to GET there.

Here’s how it’s gonna play out. I pack and worry and scream to try and make everyone be on time. Then I’ll worry some more about what we forgot and being on time. Dylan will break down in the security line and go to his dark place where he goes limp on the floor. Audrey will thrash so hard in the Ergo that she’ll ram her head on my sternum and make several bruises. And that’s all before we get on the plane.

On the plane there will be more thrashing and seat kicking and trying to reach buttons and wanting to crawl down the aisle. And the kids will act up too. (See what I did there? I’ll be here all week.)

Once we touch down in the land of milk and honey, we’ll be greeted by loving, rested grandparents ready to whisk our children away for stimulating play and healthy snacks while Brian and I fall asleep pass out for 5 days. Then we’ll wake up and eat turkey and mashed potatoes and go comatose for another 3.

Too soon it will be time to get on another plane and head back to Waterworld Oregon, where hopefully our cat hasn’t resentfully pooped on our pillows and vomited in our shoes. All the dirty laundry will steep in a small, smelly mountain in the hallway where I hope it will get so rank it’ll one day grow legs and walk itself into the washing machine.

I’ve decided that I’d actually like to enjoy our trip, so I plan to re-blog some of my favorite old posts while I’m gone, especially since I have some new readers and I’d like to share some pieces of which I’m rather proud.

I got nothin today, folks. Not a real post, at least. (I often start out a post saying this, and then end up writing a post. This is now a post.)

Sometimes (most of the time) I feel like my husband and I are just scrambling to try and keep this household and our family running somewhat smoothly. We are stretched, our energy is so limited, and if something goes wrong – speaking for myself – I get overwhelmed very, very quickly. Today was one of those days where shit went wrong, but, miraculously, quality good times were also had. No wonder I feel like I have mood swings. My mood swings have mood swings.

The lows:

The weather suuuuucked today. Non-stop rain made me want to stay in bed.

Our furnace broke today, so our house is effing cold. I can’t stand being cold.

I want to strangle my cat, or at least forcibly remove her vocal chords. She wakes me up, wakes our kids up, and anyone who disturbs my sleep who is not one of my kids is DEAD TO ME.

The highs:

Met a friend for breakfast and found THREE friends waiting for me at breakfast. It was a very lovely time out.

Snotty wet kisses from mah babes.

The boyman coming home from work in the middle of the day to troubleshoot the furnace issue.

Laughed til I peed borrowed diet coke about bible references and street names for drugs. (You had to be there.) We got matching shirts, we’re gonna study, and we’ll be back next time to kick ass and take names, PDX Trivia! Should my callsign be Turnip or Scalene?

This psycho-mommy is trying to get her blogging ass back in gear. I have no idea who actually reads this thing anymore. Helloooo?! Who’s out there? If you’re still there, or are just joining me, I want to hear from you- leave a comment!

And yes, I know this is wordless Wednesday, but I decided to make an exception. I blame the wine.

Like this:

When I was pregnant with my first baby, his movements made me come up with a word that described his personality. I blogged about it.

And now I’ve come up with a word for my daughter: mischievous.

Her distinctive move as of late is to wait until I am asleep and then wedge herself up under the right side of my ribcage. Once I wake up to pee, which is often, and feel the pain, it’s too late. Her damage has been done.

What is it with my babies enjoying the right side of my uterus?! Does it have an ocean view? Fresh paint? Hardwood floors? I guess I’ll never know.

She also enjoys dragging her pointy, pointy little elbows across the width of my abdomen, which makes for quite a show from the outside. And lately she’s been snuggling down lower and lower, which I understand is a good thing, since she’s getting ready for her big debut, but my bladder really doesn’t appreciate it. And I really hope she doesn’t start pinching my cervix like my first did, because whoa man, that shit hurts like a baby on the cervix.

And it never fails – every time I have babydaddy put his hand on my tummy to feel baby going crazy with her breakdance fighting lessons, she stops. Just like that.

So enjoy your time in there, Little Miss. I only hope I’m calling you mischievous because I’m cranky and this pregnancy seems longer and harder than the first and not because you’re gearing up to give me a hard time.

He’s kinda like a time bomb, actually, and if I don’t get him outside burning off steam, he’s going to explode yucky kid goo all over the walls of my house.

And so we walk to the park.

Well, I waddle.

I can’t move very fast anymore. Moving hurts me. And while it’s great that there are several parks within a few blocks of my house, my kid still insists on running away from me, often into the street.

Jesus ouch goes my fast waddle.

I’m told this is a common problem (the running into the street…but I guess also the waddle. but I was originally referring only to the running). So why can’t parents with brains design human parks like they design dog parks? Toddlers and dogs ain’t that much different, folks. Fence them in. Mommy’s tired of running. And by running I mean waddle-shuffling.

And another thing. Plant some damn trees. I know this is Oregon, but occasionally we have this thing called sunlight.

And while you’re at it, add in a little Starbucks booth. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just big enough for a sexy college dropout barista and that whoosh-whoosh machine that makes the foam.

Cuz sleep is getting harder to come by and we all know this is only going to get worse. I need to stay just conscious enough while I’m resting my eyes in the shade so that I can take my dog-child back home after he’s burned off a sufficient amount of evil.

I grew up camping. I was a Girl Scout for 11 years and then a camp counselor. After that, my boyfriend, now husband (whom I met whilst camp counseling) got me hooked on backpacking.

I developed that love-hate relationship with it, where while I’m hiking up the hill in 1354627 degree heat, I just want to die…but once I get to the top, it’s all worth it. Survival. Independence. Self-reliance. All that good stuff that we are so excited to pass on to our kid.

We realized we hadn’t been camping in 4 years, and since I’m pregnant with #2, we needed to get in a trip RIGHT NOW before I am too big and before we have a screaming baby to take care of.

The short version of this story: camping was fucking hard.

Before going, I had read several articles about how camping with kids was so doable, you guys! Just get out there and do it!

And, like a sucker, I was like, YEAH! Let’s do this! What could go wrong?!

The hardest part was trying to keep some kind of normal sleep schedule for my almost 2 year old. He barely napped in the car on the way there. Strike one.

We went out for dinner so we could hurry to the campsite and set up with enough time to put the kid to bed at a reasonable hour. Now, we don’t co-sleep and we put our kid to bed while he’s still wide awake, so it’s his job to self-soothe himself to sleep. I originally worried that there was no way we’d be able to get a pack n play into our tent, because I didn’t see how our thrashy sleeper would get any sleep (let alone US get any sleep) lying on an open mattress next to us. Thank goodness our hand-me-down 5 person tent was plenty big enough to fit the pack n play next to a full sized blow up mattress for my pregnant hips. It was a good start.

Our sleep setup

So we get him to bed, and he’s super distracted (understandable) and it takes him a while to get to bed, but he does, and without crying. When we go in the tent to sleep, I can smell that he’s poopy (my son, not my husband). We decided to let him sleep with the risk that the poopy might give him a rash.

It was a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep and my son couldn’t sleep. Like, at all. I woke up several times to my son standing in the pnp, leaning over me, whispering Mama. Creepy as all hell. Go the eff to sleep, kid.

He woke up upset at 6am, when he normally sleeps til 8 or 9, sometimes even later. I got up to change his poopy (which had leaked all over everything. perfect.) which made him scream and he wouldn’t stop…..and we woke up the entire camp and FELT HORRIBLE.

Breakfast was tough, he didn’t want to eat, he wanted to run away into the road. I was exhausted and cranky and pregnant.

To make matters worse, we had to break down camp completely because we had to switch to a new campsite for the second night. Ugh. We seriously considered just going home.

But I’m glad we didn’t.

Breakfast and cleanup and breaking down camp took forever because one of us had to do all the work while the other made sure Cranky McDidn’t Sleep stayed alive. We managed to pack a lunch, get the hell outta there, and went to the beach (a very short drive away). Dylan perked up, ate, ran through the freezing ankle-deep water. We all had fun. We saw a 100 year old shipwreck!

Then we got to the second campsite and set everything up with enough time for Dylan to actually get a nap in before dinner. He had to cry himself to sleep in order to do it, but he just needed to fuck-ing sleeeeeeeeeeep.

Unfortunately, he woke for dinner sooper cranky and crying and wanting to run out into the road, again. It was incredibly frustrating and scary. Everything during camping is hard to do anyway – cooking, washing dishes, set up, clean up – and it went even slower because one of us had to constantly be following Dylan around. I now totally understand why parents put their kids in leashes. Sign me up.

Thank goodness we had the genius forethought to plan hotdogs for dinner, because Dylan ate like a champ and I kid you not – halfway through the meal, his cranky whines stopped and he looked up at me and said, very calmly, Hi. In response, I said, “Welcome back!” And he was back, just like that. My sweet, lovable, obedient little boy. We went for a walk around the campground and he had his first s’more (loooved it) and we put him to bed and everything was glorious. That night I slept, he slept, we all SLEPT. And Dylan woke at his normal time, smiling and giggling like the horror that was yesterday never happened.

We had oatmeal and packed up and saw a cool fort and drove home and it was a very lovely day. No one tried to run out into the road!

Plan simple meals. This one saved us. Ain’t nobody got time for fancy meals when everything takes ten times as long and you have a hungry, cranky kid running into the road.

Pack early. With kids, you have to bring a lot of extra shit. We left later than we wanted because we were scrambling to get everything and to make sure it all fit in the car.

Reserve your campsite early. The reason we had to switch campsites was because no one campsite was open two nights in a row because we waited so long to book. Apparently people in Oregon loves them some camping.

Be prepared to leave early if you need to. Because every well-intentioned plan needs a backup. Or an escape route.

I’m going to need some seriously awesome suggestions for family Halloween costumes, you guys.

Cuz my seriously knocked-up self is going to be pretty huge by then, so I gotta take full advantage of this costume-wearing opportunity.

Yup, you heard me. I’m preggers again and it hardly feels real.

Well, so far it just feels exhausting and I doubt that will change for a very, very long time. I wish I could go back to my pregnant-for-the-first-time-self and tell her how easy she had it. She could rest and nap whenever she wanted. She could eat whenever she wanted. She could watch whatever she wanted on TV, whenever. And she didn’t have a demanding, energetic toddler to waddle after. Ugh, this is hard.

And the scary thing is, I only see it getting harder. How do SAHMs take care of a toddler and a newborn? I don’t see how it’s possible, and I have no idea how I’m going to do it.

I worry about my mental health. It’ll be winter, it’ll be cold and rainy. I’m not going to want to go anywhere, and I’ll feel alone.

I have hope in knowing that this phase will be temporary. That I got through it before, and I’ll get through it again. That I have some good mommy instincts and that I have some great tools and experience under my belt that I didn’t have the first time. That the kids will grow and change and gradually become more independent from me. And at the same time, I don’t want to already be wishing away all the cuddly newborn snuggle time.

Some phases you can’t wait for them to be over, but this one, this one I am very thankful for. Especially since a part of me is bracing for the “no” phase that most likely is yet to come.

And it’s not only that my kid is particularly agreeable most of the time. He’s also friggin’ polite and I have no idea where it came from. Seriously, we’ve taught him here and there to either say or sign “please” and “thank you” (he’ll only sign “please” and he’ll do a combo of signing “thank you” and/or saying “da-gu!” *melt my heart*), but he spontaneously says da-gu, like, all the time. And when he asks for something and we hesitate to say yes for whatever reason, he’ll often follow up with an adorably placed “please” sign and an expectant smile. We’re in big trouble.

One time, he thanked me for changing his diaper. I cried. It’s so charming that it’s scary. He could ask for a flame thrower, sign please and say da-gu and I’d hand one right over without a second thought. Sure, my love. Whatever you want!

So forgive me for gushing about my baby. He’s not perfect, and I know phases are temporary, which is partly why I think I am drawn to blog about this particular phase. I want to remember this one. I want to remember how, for a few months (maybe longer??? please??), my kid acted like a charming angel some of the time.